Market Guide 2014: Introduction

From the Editor

Look, you gotta eat every day. We get this. And because the demands of your growling stomach are as incessant and irritating as A Prairie Home Companion on NPR weekends, it’s easy to fall into routines in your shopping habits.

Whether New Seasons, Whole Foods, Fred Meyer or Zupan’s—or
maybe the Alberta Street co-op—you’ve already got your
favorite grocery store for buying staple food. Maybe it’s close to your
house, and maybe it says something about who you are. You know it like
you know your neighbors, with all of their virtues and flaws. At
Safeway, the smart shoppers hunt out yellow tags and meat specials; at
New Seasons, they haunt the bulk grains and caress deli cheeses.

But this guide isn’t about your daily trip to buy bread
and milk—unless you buy your daily bread straight from a baker and your
milk from the farmer who got intimate with the cow. We hope you use this
market guide as a map to adventure in your meals.

We’ve also talked to the makers of some of Portland’s most
interesting and flavorful sauces and spices, from Cambodian grill sauce to quince honey rosemary jam, and asked them how
they made it, as well as what’s the best way to use their pinot noir sea
salt or habanero carrot curry sauce. And we’ve
rounded up our city’s copious array of farmers markets, where
you can buy your edibles straight from the people who made and grew
them.

Like a coach for food introverts, this guide invites you
to embrace the fresh, the special and the unfamiliar in Portland’s food
markets. In other words, kiss the damn fish.